I’ve attempted to write deeply personally articles describing how my music describes my life, but they have always turned out feeling superficial and dumb, as if it belonged more on someone’s crappy Myspace page than on my personal website. Why is it so hard to write about this? What makes it so difficult. I’ve come up with a theory.

Music is simply too personal

usic is extremely personal. The feeling it gives you is not always given to others. The way a song makes you feel is not always shared with other people listening to the same song. Music touches on a part of us that is intimately tied with our personal experiences and parts of our lives that other people have no access to. Because music can become so intertwined with who we are, it makes describing it like describing a feeling. You know what it feels like, why you like it, and why it is your favorite, but when sharing feelings through communication, there is always something lost in translation. And that something is typically what you were trying to say in the first place.

If I were going to try to describe to you why The Distillers makes be feel happier in times that I’m down here on my website, I’d be in for a fight. First of all I’d be describing the feeling altering effects of an artistic medium, but also I would be attempting to tailor it to you, my audience. That isn’t going to work.

If music is personal, how can I possibly alter what I’m feeling into something that you would want/care to read? You don’t know me. You don’t care about about how Dr. Chud’s X-Ward makes feel. So if I wanted to share it with you I would be forced to alter my message into something compelling to a general audience. This would be nothing more than a watered down version of what I was intending, and I think I owe y’all more than that.

Happy 30th Birthday Punk!

Although I realize that punk music has actually been around for more than 30 years, the time that most people consider the birth date of punk has arrived.  Go on, spit out the candles.

Time magazine has a nice history lesson about punk on their site.  They cover a few of the basics regarding the genre and it’s worth the 2 minutes it takes to listen to.

Gray Day is a two column theme with a right sidebar. The primary colors utilized are Gray and Blue. The top area is prepared for you to show off a few social sites and is prepared for you to use the WP Audioscrobbler plugin for last.fm stats.

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I’m going to start this story from the end, then progress to that point from the beginning. The last thing said here was “That blows donkeys!”

Now, let’s find out what made me say that.

I was scared. I feared. I was afraid that my hard work was lost forever. I had just completed the longest walk of my lifetime, over 6 miles in 2 hours 30 minutes. I was excited! At that time I was knee deep in a challenge to walk or run 25 miles and I was dangerously close to winning. I was already more than half way completed, and was cruising toward the finish line. I knew that my 6 mile walk would insure my victory over my enemies…I mean friends.

After my epic trek, I got home and attempted to sync my walk, but the internet was down. So after a few hours of being passed out on the couch I found that the internet was back and ready for me to submit my walk. So with my nose in the air I plugged the iPod into the iMac and watched as it began to sync, but instead of being greeted with the usual popup asking if I wanted to visit the Nike+ website, it instead told me that the data shouldn’t be submitted to the server.

My heart dropped. I was simultaneously mad, shocked, a smidgen hungry, and upset.

What happened? Why was it that the longest walk known to man couldn’t be submitted to the Nike+ servers? Was the number so immense that the servers thought I must have cheated somehow? Then I remembered the daily internet outage. Perhaps it had traveled through the USB cable and infected the iPod with its overall suckiness. I thought perhaps I could make it send if the iPod told iTunes that it had a new run. So I quickly ran .01 miles in the living room and attempted to submit again, only to find that iTunes skipped my 6 mile walk and submitted my .01 mile living room run with no problems. WEAK!

So in a last ditch effort I used the ever useful Google to search for the same problem. Only to find many similar reports all over the internet. Great, I thought. If this many people have had the same problem, then a solution must be available! But the best advice I could find was to disconnect the iPod and plug it back in…..That’s it? That is the expert advice that is given to the 4 trillion people in the world who have walks or runs that are shorter than my record breaking walk? This can’t be. There must be something else that can be done. Fake Steve Jobs, help me!

But instead of Fake Steve Jobs, I found real Richard Leyton. Using information on his site I discovered that my incredible Forrest Gump run of 6 miles had been moved to the folder on the iPod that only contains runs that had already been synced with Nike+. So not only did the Nike+ server refuse my run, it also told my iPod that it no longer wanted to deal with that run and lied to iTunes so it wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. That was shocking. SHOCKING! Nike+ was attempting to disavow any knowledge of my Guinness Book of World Records run.

Luckily my hero Richard Leyton had instructions regarding how to move run data that had not been synced with the server from the synced folder back to the “send this data now” folder on the iPod. But this would only make it so iTunes would attempt to send it. I had a feeling that the same error popup would await me.

Luckily Richard Leyton had that figured out as well. Apparently Nike+ will not allow you to have an ampersand (&) in your playlist name. And guess what playlist I had listened to on that run “AFI&GG”, my AFI and Groovie Ghoulies playlist.

Now I ask. If iTunes allows me to use it, if the Nike+ software on the iPod allows me to use it, why can’t the online application allow me to use it? More importantly, why did I see no documentation about this issue? And why didn’t the error popup tell me this was the issue? Why instead did I have to believe that my ironman run may be lost forever?

Shame on you Nike. We runners and walkers deserve better than this. In protest I’m going to gain 60 pounds and sit on the couch all day. That’ll show you!

So after I used the instructions I breathed a sigh of relief and said to myself. “That blows donkeys!” Originally I was going to say “That blows donkeys & dogs” but it wouldn’t allow it.

I’ve done video work for a long time now. I’ve shot weddings, I’ve created a number of personal videos and effects shots, school projects, training videos, and a number of other things. But recently I’ve been working on a client video and I must say, it has sucked the fun out of video work.

Working on this video has shown me that people simply have no idea what it takes to make a decent video. Sure, anyone can point a camera at something and shoot, but to make something that people actually will want to look at is a whole other story. It takes a lot of time to plan, shoot, edit, and author video. It’s not as simple as turning your webcam toward something and clicking a record button.

This experience, although good from the vantage point that I’m doing something that I like at work, has caused me to miss the ole’ days of my video work. When everything seemed so fresh and exciting. My days as a moderator at VCDhelp. The days where a little fake blood and a video camera equaled a fun afternoon.

Good Lord.  According to the always correct Miss Teen USA pageant, one out of every 5,  or 20%, of Americans can’t find the USA on a map.

Through the magical pixie dust of the internet you can hear the question and the amazing answer given by South Carolina’s pageant contestant here.

How have we become so dumb?  Is it because we now place more emphasis on the daily lives of celebrities than we do on real news?  Is it because we see higher education as a call to party and experiment with drugs/sex?  Or is it because we feel education isn’t important any more?

I’ve heard far to often from my various teacher friends about kids who only go to school because they are forced by law and take the first bus out once they turn 16.  16! At 16 I couldn’t tell you who fought in the Spanish American War.  Or what year the War of 1812 occurred.  And these kids believe they know everything they need to get through life.  These are the types of people who don’t know when to use there and when to use their.

Can’t find America on a map, my goodness.  This brings a memory of mine from 4th grade, Mrs. Yates class.  She was teacher of the year in 1994, my year, by the way.  We took the continent test that year.  Easy A….for me.  I still remember looking over at the girl next to me’s paper and seeing that she failed.  She actually had South America where Europe is and North America where Africa is.  Yeah, she had South more north than North.  I bet the surveyed her for this poll.

My wife and I went out for dinner tonight with my parents.  We hit the usual conversation points: me talking badly about Republicans, me jokingly pushing dumb liberal ideas, me eating way to much fried food.

After dinner we talked outside the restaurant about school being back in session and about how dumb science fairs are when my dad said “You’ll be a great dad.”  WOW! What a complement there.  I’ve never even thought about being a dad and it seems people are already know I’m going to rule at it.  Way to go future me!

It did make me think about for a minute.  Whenever we do have kids, how will I act around my kids?  Will I be the cool, hip dad?  Will I be the strict, ruling dad?  Will I be the nerdy, please don’t let my friends see you dad?  Or will I be some weird mixture of all of these?

The only conclusion that we could come to was that I’ll be a great dad, but our kids are going to a handful.  From all the stories I’ve heard about how I was growing up, I know it’s going to be an interesting ride……5 or more years from now.

The other day I was searching Google for blogs that mentioned The Misfits in an effort to find some quality punk blogs.  I found a sweet punk blog/podcast website called Strange Reaction.  It’s worth your time to check out!

Just in case you haven’t heard yet, Rock Band is a forthcoming video game for all the latest video games systems that will allow you and three of your friends to make complete idiots of yourselves. In the game you control the guitar, bass, drums, and vocals of a fictional band that must play songs made popular by other, better, bands. This concept has been successfully applied to the Guitar Hero series, much to the delight of non-guitar players worldwide. Rock Band takes this concept and applies it to the entire band.

The previous Guitar Hero games only required you to play guitar, so the vocals of the songs did not matter as much as the blistering solo, but with the addition of the vocal element to Rock Band there is an aspect that has yet to be addressed in any marketing material.

How will cussing be dealt with?

In the Guitar Hero series cuss words were quickly edited out of the songs, but that will no longer be an option because Rock Band requires you to sing. Judging from the partial song list released there are plenty of cuss words in the songs, so how will the game deal with them? Will they simply be edited out, or will the full songs be left intact? If the songs are edited, but you sing the original explicit version, will you lose points, and vice versa?